Narrative, Theory 1: Bordwell & Thompson (1997)

a) Inferred events

b) Explicitly shown events

c) Non-diegetic material

"Narrative theory suggests that we are able to comprehend and enjoy fictional Media stories because they are organised in a way that reflects the patterns and structures of our 'real lives'. The pattern of events in media stories reflect the chronology of real life as well as the causality "action triggers reaction: each step has an effect which in turn becomes a new cause"

• The story: Story (fabula): consists 'of all the events in a narrative, both explicitly presented and inferred' - Bordwell and Thompson (2004) 
• The Plot: Plot (syuzhet): 'everything visibly and audibly present in the film before us: in other words those highly selected parts of the story which the narrative puts before us' - Bordwell and Thompson (2004) 
• The Narrative: Narrative: (narration) describes how a story is told, how the material is selected and arranged in order to achieve particular effects on the audience: linear or non-linear (episodic, flash-back etc ) Bordwell and Thompson (2004) 
• Structuralism: A belief that there is structure in all things – that items within a certain paradigm (a class of elements with similarities) follow specific patterns